So tomorrow's my court date. I've never been to court before. I'm already all nervous. Should I dress up? Should I always say "your honon" - like, even if I'm just answering a question, should I say, "Yes, your honor"?

I imagine I should suppress my urge to say to the judge, "Woah, I thought all you dudes wore those funky wigs!", huh?

Is Allyson around? I have questions and would like to for her to answer if possible.

I am here.

tommy, totally call him "honon."

What's it for, Tommyrot, if you don't mind saying. Is this traffic court? I wouldn't worry too much in that case.

Can I email you, or you me?

Also he thinks linguistic change takes hundreds of years.

FWIW, this is not totally wrong -- major pronunciation shifts tend to take a long time (or else happen suddenly every 500 years for no reason we can explain, depending on your theory) and grammar takes a long time to change usually.

It's just, yeah, everything else you would call linguistic change -- new words, words becoming archaic, change in a word's meaning -- those happen alla time, and instantly, and have since like forever. As anyone who has had to read a government report full of mysterious nonsense-jargon could tell you.

Absocertainly!

Allyson000 (those are zeros, not spaghetti-o's) at aol dot com is the bestest place this time of day.

What's it for, Tommyrot, if you don't mind saying. Is this traffic court? I wouldn't worry too much in that case.

Yeah. I was driving with a suspended license (because I failed to pay a speeding ticket in Utah). I didn't know my license was suspended, as I never got anything in the mail telling me. That, howerver, was my fault, as I had not updated my license info when I moved. So there's several levels of naughtiness going on here....

Yeah, I thought that was probably it. Dress nice, speak politely, you'll be fine. Traffic court they're mostly interested in moving you on your way asap.

Assuming you've gotten it unsuspended since, that is. If you get a chance to speak, just say what you said - I was unaware, yadda yadda, I've corrected the problem.

I had to go to traffic court in Waukegan a few years back when I had missed the deadline to renew my registration (I had the paperwork in my purse, but hadn't taken the time to stop by the currency exchange to get the sticker). The cop was really nice (and really cute--looked like a shorter and younger Peter Gallagher!) and told me not to pay the $75 ticket, but go to traffic court and contest it, since the judge would probably give me a break. Sure enough, he halved the fine to $36 since I had gotten the sticker in the two months after the ticket.